Friday, July 11, 2003

Someone got leaned on. The story that I referred to below as "Bush knew Iraq info was false" has now been turned into "Bush knew Iraq info was dubious."

There's no doubt pressure was brought to bear. None. Whether it was directly by the White House, or simply by some higher-up at CBS terrified of the White House, this didn't happen because the reporter decided "well, I should use a more passive term to make the story sound better". Interestingly enough, however, the content of the story didn't appear to be changed too much, and the "money quote" saying that "he bottom line is the White House knowingly included in a presidential address information its own CIA had explicitly warned might not be true" was left in place.

(On the other hand, that "might" may not be in the original article.)

Still, this remains an indication of a weaker White House than we've seen in a while- six months ago, this story would not have been written. Period.

Does anybody have a saved copy of the original article? I'd like to go over exactly what was changed, if possible.

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